YouTube Policy Update – 1000 Subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time to start Monetization

YouTube is turning out to be one of the great platforms for the youngsters to showcase their talents in front the whole world. Not just showing off your talent but also YouTube lets you earn through uploading videos and monetizing them. 2017 was the year when a lot of creators joined YouTube, especially from India. But with the increase in the number of creators, we also saw an increase in the number of bad quality content.

In 2017 the company made a big change to its guidelines. Surrounding channel monetization and advertiser approval. Youtube changed there Youtube Partner Program (YPP) and made it mandatory to have. A minimum of 10,000 channel views needed to earn view youtube.

YouTube came with a new change in Youtube Partner Program:

But now there is a new change in the Youtube Partner Program (YPP). Now the company has made it even difficult to earn. You need minimum 1,000 subscribers and minimum 4000 hours of watch time in past 12 months. If you calculate it in minutes then it means that your audience must have watched your video for over 2,40,000 minutes in the past 12 months. Which indeed is a hard thing to get that watch time especially for a new creator.

The company never changed their policies for old creators but now they have. If you are an old creator you still need to have more than 1,000 subs and over 4,000 hours of watch time. The only thing in the favor of old creators with less than 1000 subs. Is this new policy will come into effect starting 20th February. If the monetization gets disabled then all of your previous earnings will be transferred to your Adsense account.

To re-apply for monetization on the channel the channel creator will have to reach the milestone of 1,000 subscribers and have more than 4,000 hours of watch time. Of course, this new policy is going to affect small creators. “Though these changes will affect a significant number of channels, 99% of those affected were making less than $100 per year in the last year, with 90% earning less than $2.50 in the last month.” – Youtube posted on its Blog.

Yes, it is a bad news for the small creators and may demotivate new creator to come up on YouTube. But was a necessary move by the company as bad content was increasing day by day.

Are you a YouTuber? What do you think about the change ? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

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